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Introduction

Call me a couch potato, but I’d rather spend an hour looking for my
remote control than go back to the Neanderthal ways of controlling my television
from the television itself. Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 lets
you perform a lot of cool things—like being able to browse, watch, record,
and pause live TV. The pluggable infrastructure of Media Center also allows for
vendors to plug in new functionality.

In this article, I’ll introduce you to mControl, a product of
Embedded Automation, that lets you "take control of a home from a TV
set." mControl is a Media Center plug-in application that controls devices
understanding the INSTEON and X10 protocols, simply by using the Media Center
remote. With mControl’s easy-to-use graphical user interface, you can do
simple things such as turn a lamp on/off (which is exactly what I’ll show
you how to do in this article) or powerful tricks like controlling the
temperature of your hot tub.